VIDO asks city for more money to build Centre for Pandemic Research

The Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) is seeking city council's help to become the national Centre for Pandemic Research.

The city has already donated $250,000 toward the development of the facility. VIDO representatives attended Monday's governance and priorities committee to request an additional $50,000 from the city to help build its new research centre.

"What we're going to be able to do at that point is from early discovery research, all the way through development to commercialization have all the infrastructure in place in a single, vertically integrated system to really drive innovation in Canada," VIDO director of business development Paul Hodgson said.

Plans to expand VIDO's research centre and build a new animal research facility were unveiled in 2020 with an estimated budget of $66 million. Building materials and construction costs have since spiked the budget past $92 million.

Original estimates had $46 million included from the federal government, $15 million from the Saskatchewan government, $4.55 million from VIDO itself and $250,000 from the City of Saskatoon.

VIDO is now asking Ottawa to contribute $66.2 million and the province to give $19.1 million, with VIDO paying $6.5 million on top of the city's contribution.

The intention is to build VIDO a Level 4 containment lab — the highest level of biosecurity. This would allow researchers to work with the most significant and deadly human and animal diseases.

"We would be, if not the top, probably one of the top three [facilities] in the entire world," Hodgson said.

"This is a game changer."

Mayor Charlie Clark urged council to increase the funding.

"To have something that is being built in our city that can play that kind of role in the world, to me, is pretty incredible," Clark said. "I certainly support this request."

VIDO completed construction of its vaccine manufacturing facility in June.

With its manufacturing, research and production infrastructure all available in one place, VIDO will be able to attract scientists from across the world and be better prepared for any infectious disease outbreak in the future.

"This facility could actually have made vaccine for Canada and Saskatoon and could have supplied COVID vaccine for Canada,” Hodgson said to the committee.

Had this infrastructure been in place prior to the pandemic, Hodgson said everyone would have been seeking out VIDO's vaccine instead of AstraZeneca or Moderna during the pandemic because it would have been the first vaccine on the market.

"Hindsight is 20/20," he said. "I think it would have been a game changer for where VIDO's vaccine was and what we're able to do for the rest of Canada."

While $50,000 isn't a considerable amount of money for the overall scope of the project, both Hodgson and lawyer Doug Richardson said the city's support is crucial to securing funding from other parties for the increased costs.

"Those three partners moving in scope is actually relatively unique across Canada, and the fact that municipal government is providing money to a capital project is incredible. That bears an incredible amount of weight with the federal government."

The $50,000 funding increase wouldn't be needed until 2025, according to VIDO.

The committee gave the request unanimous support and urged VIDO to share that with the other levels of government. Administration will bring forward funding options at a meeting in the new year.